Hey everyone! How have you all been? I am sure you are all wondering why I never started my New York blog series. I know it has been almost 3 weeks since I made the announcement and I have yet to post the first installment. Well, long story short, it is a major pain in the ass to move to New York City. Ignorantly, I had these ideas about 19 year olds from the Midwest that just up and move to New York and automatically find a one room studio for $800 a month and just work day and night to move up to a one bedroom whenever they’ve saved enough money.

Let me just say, if you are thinking about this little fantasy too, THAT IS NOT HOW IT WORKS.

Reality smacked me in the face quite quickly. About a month ago, I went up to Massachusetts with my boyfriend. He has a timeshare up there and we figured we could just take the train into the city everyday and find something quickly. I had been looking on Zillow.com and Trulia.com for a few weeks, but everyone that I called or emailed said to call them when I got to the city because the listings that were available would be gone by the time I got there. I later found out that the average listing is only available for 48 hours, so you have to jump on them immediately and submit an application.

I found one realtor online that worked in Brooklyn (from what I understand the real estate licenses in the city are only good for one borough, so most agents stick to one borough). She called me about a week before I was due to arrive and I gave her my budget and the areas I wanted to live. At this time, I had this fantasy in my mind that I would be able to find a studio for $900, so I said that my budget was $1000 a month. I did not have any other requirements. As I am not moving my furniture, I did not care about square footage or anything. This agent told me to contact her when I got to New York, so on the ride up to Massachusetts I called her and we talked for about 45 minutes. She said she would look and call me back the next morning.

I found out through research that if you are not employed in New York City, you have to have a cosigner from the tri-state area. If you call people and tell them you are a student and you have cash for the lease (which I did), they still won’t show you the listing because most places require you to have a minimum income of 40 times the rent. i.e. A studio for $1000 a month means you have to make $40,000 at a job in New York.